


Urban Jungle Gym

by shamusandstone (theleaveswant)



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Community: elle_luke, Gen, playground
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-02
Updated: 2009-08-02
Packaged: 2017-10-09 20:49:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theleaveswant/pseuds/shamusandstone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Luke might have done after Sylar dumped him; cameos by Elle and Sylar (?).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Urban Jungle Gym

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers to 3x18. Last minute entry for the elle_luke [challenge #3](http://community.livejournal.com/elle_luke/12797.html) prompt "playground". I submit this for the "drabble" division, though it's a little too long.  
> Contains suggestions of violence and drug use.

Luke didn't go home after Sylar dumped him. Couldn't, not after stealing his mother's car and running away with the man who'd broken into their home and held them hostage. After melting a guy's head and leaving his corpse on the living room rug. He tried to convince himself it was because his mother would kick the snot out of him, turn him in to the police, sell him to a freak show, fear and hate him now more than ever. Actually, it was because he was afraid she wouldn't. The very worst thing he could imagine was that she might forgive him. That he might knock on the door and she'd open it and wrap him up in her arms and cry on his shoulder instead of slamming it in his face. So he didn't go home.

Instead he hitchhiked. Found his way somehow to Chicago. Slept in a shelter and spent his days wandering the city. Saw some guys free-running in a park and thought it looked fun, so he found a lonely alley and started practicing the moves he'd seen. He sucked the first time he tried it, kept falling and hurting himself, but he was used to that so he kept at it. In a few weeks he felt bold enough to approach the others in the park with a handstand/flip over a ramp railing, and though they laughed and called him Fresh Meat they shared their chips and their weed and taught him all sorts of new tricks.

Eventually Luke talked to the social worker who visited the shelter twice a week, and sob-storied his way into a job unloading trucks for a department store. He started saving money, though the obligation to bring snacks et cetera to share with his new buddies slowed his progress, and he got a library card so he could use the free terminals to watch parkour videos on Youtube. Day by day, his vision of the city shifted, spatial awareness expanding vertically, until he began to approach his surroundings as a field of kinetic possibility, a playground of handholds, balance points, fulcrums and levers. Fuck high school, this was all the physics lesson Luke needed.

He started to daydream, slumped against a clothing rack in the freezing parking garage, about meeting Sylar again, even hunting him down. In his fantasies Luke got the drop on him with his new urban acrobatic skills and Sylar was so impressed that he begged him to come along on his next road trip. Luke just smiled and shook his head, because he'd outgrown all that. If he'd really outgrown it he probably wouldn't dream it, but the feeling was nice while it lasted.

One day in November there was a new girl with his group in the park. She was tiny, with a crooked smile, bundled up in scarves, mittens and toque. Something about her creeped Luke out. It was probably that distraction that made him fall, though it felt like an electric shock, like the fire escape ladder he'd grabbed was biting his hands through his fingerless gloves. He heard her laugh as he sank through the air, but it was Sylar's sneering face that filled his vision when he hit the ground.


End file.
